Letter Machine Editions was a small, nonprofit publisher of books and chapbooks, run by Lisa Wells and Joshua Marie Wilkinson, based in Portland, Oregon, in the United States. Joshua Marie Wilkinson was the Publisher; Lisa Wells served as Editor-in-Chief. Letter Machine’s most recent titles were designed by HR Hegnauer. The press was founded in Denver, Colorado in 2007 by Josh and Noah Eli Gordon (1975-2022). In 2024, Fonograf Editions agreed to take over Letter Machine’s back catalog, as Josh and Lisa join Mark Levine as series editors of Kuhl House Poets for University of Iowa Press.
Letter Machine published about twenty titles, and its books were honored by the National Book Foundation, the LA Times Book Prizes, Poetry Society of America, the Arab American Book Awards, and other organizations. Letter Machine books and chapbooks were reviewed in The New York Times, American Book Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Jacket2, Rain Taxi, The Washington Post, The Rumpus, Coldfront, & Vice, among many others. Fred Moten’s book The Feel Trio was named a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry as well; it also won the Gold Medal in Poetry from the California Book Awards. Brandon Shimoda’s book Evening Oracle was selected as the winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America.
Fourteen LM books made the Small Press Distribution (SPD) best-seller list, including three #1 best-sellers. While Letter Machine is no longer publishing new work, we have partnered with Fonograf Editions to keep our back catalog available.
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